The second coming of the cream puff

From Paris to your local patisserie, the simple choux a la creme is all the rage. The best part? It's a cinch to make

Cream Puffs photographed at Lesley Chesterman's home in Montreal. Delectable cream puffs are great for a dinner party. Gild the lily and serve with champagne and strawberries.

Photograph by: Dario Ayala
, For Postmedia News

MONTREAL -- Foodies spend a lot of time analyzing restaurant trends like tartares, charcuterie and nose-to-tail dining. Yet on the seldom-discussed sweet spectrum, trends are abundant, too. We’ve all eaten our share of macarons, cupcakes, creme brulee, molten chocolate cake and verrines. But the latest in the way of "in" pastries is one we all probably grew up eating: the cream puff.

Known in French as "choux a la creme," these cream-filled pastries are making a comeback of huge proportions. In Paris, they’ve even put a name to it: choumania. Tired after three decades of textureless mousse cakes and then verrines, pastry chefs have begun revisiting retro pastries, especially those made with pate a choux (cream puff pastry).

Yes, after Fauchon in Paris revived the eclair, and Laduree (also in Paris) breathed new life into the religieuse, star patissier Philippe Conticini of La patisserie des reves has opened a new pastry shop that includes a cream puff bar called the "Bar a choux." Customers can choose from an assortment of flavours like pistachio and raspberry, caramel and liquid caramel and vanilla and lime. As the beauty of a pastry made with pate a choux lies in the contrast between the crisp pastry and the cream (which deteriorates once they meet), every choux is made to order.

Here in Montreal, the trend toward flavoured creams is slow coming, though you can buy vanilla cream puffs at most every patisserie. And you’ll occasionally find a choux dessert in restaurants whose menus often feature revamped classics, like Lawrence and Joe Beef.

Yet the best place to enjoy cream puffs is certainly at home, for unlike some of the more complicated French pastries made with pate à choux, like Paris-Brest and croqueen-bouche, cream puffs are a cinch to make. As they are so easy, the pastry’s two components, the pate à choux and the cream, must be perfect.

While working in Lyon in 1989 at a patisserie called La Minaudiere, I was put on — get this — cream puff duty. Now being put on cream puff duty in any pastry shop is a treat, but being put on cream puff duty in France is surreal. At La Minaudiere, we didn’t make cute little cream puffs or even those banquet special cream puffs shaped like swans. No, in Lyon we made cream puffs the size of baseballs. Funnily enough, all the desserts we made were small in scale, yet those monster cream puffs were gigantic and for good reason: the cream was just so jaw-droppingly delicious.

Delivered by a farmer three times a week, the French cream, called creme fleurette, was lower in fat than Canadian whipping cream (30 per cent as opposed to 35) and was unpasteurized, which meant it lasted only a few days. But, boy, did it ever have flavour. We sweetened it (100 g of sugar per 1,000 ml of cream) — thus transforming it into creme Chantilly — and as I recall, we never added vanilla. Didn’t need it; this cream spoke for itself.

It was whipped in a funnel-shaped machine in the fridge, in which a paddle turned slowly until the liquid transformed into a fluffy mass of loveliness. It was cream of an entirely different dimension. It was dream cream.

We split open the pate à choux buns and piled in the Chantilly cream until the pastries looked like the open jaws of a great white shark. Once dusted with powdered sugar, the choux Chantilly were whisked away to the pastry shop, where they sold faster than any other pastry.

For your next dinner party, why not try serving these scrumptious cream puffs paired perhaps with a bowl of sliced strawberries marinated in kirsch? And go ahead, gild the lily: serve them on a silver platter alongside a bottle of Blanc de Blancs Champagne. Marie Antoinette would be so lucky.

RECIPES

Cream puffs (choux a la creme)

Makes 8.

Pate a choux (cream puff pastry)

1/2 cup water

1/2 cup milk

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon sugar

7 tablespoons butter

1 cup all-purpose flour

5 eggs, 4 scrambled together and one set aside

Using a medium-heavy saucepan, combine water, milk, salt, sugar and butter and bring to a boil. Remove from heat. Immediately add all the flour and beat with a wooden spoon until a thick paste forms. Return saucepan to the burner and stir for about two minutes to dry out the paste. Transfer mixture to the bowl of a stand mixer and, on low speed with the paddle attachment, add a bit of the scrambled egg, a few tablespoons at a time, incorporating the liquid gradually into the paste until it’s smooth. At this point, if the dough looks mat and thick, break the other egg into a bowl, scramble it, and pour in about half the egg (you’ll be using the rest of the egg to glaze the choux pastry).

Grease a baking sheet (12 by 18 inches/30 by 45 cm) or line with parchment paper. Either use a pastry bag or two teaspoons to shape the paste. With the pastry bag, use a plain tip and make rounds 3 inches (8 cm) in diameter, setting them 1 1/2 inches (4 cm) apart. If using teaspoons, shape the paste into similar-size mounds. You should have 8 (or you can also make them half the size and end up with about 16 small choux).

Brush each mound of paste with the leftover beaten egg, then gently push down any peaks with the back of a fork. Bake in an oven preheated to 375°F (190°C) for about 35 minutes, or until puffed and a deep golden brown (do not undercook the choux, they must be crispy and cooked through or they will become soggy). Cool completely before filling. If freezing, freeze on sheets. Once frozen, store in plastic bags or plastic containers in the freezer.

To fill: Cut off the top third of each puff, remove any excess dough in the centre and then pipe the Chantilly cream generously into the body of each cavity using a pastry bag fitted with a star tip, or simply fill the inside of the cream puff using a spoon or spatula. Top with the pastry cap and refrigerate. Dust generously with sifted icing sugar just before serving.

Chantilly cream

Though you may be tempted to purchase artisanal creams to make this dish, be sure the fat content is no higher than 35 per cent. Some of the "artisanal" creams (often sold in cheese shops) have too high a fat content, which causes the cream to fall soon after it’s whipped.

Chill the mixing bowl and beaters in the freezer for 10 minutes before whipping your cream. Combine all the ingredients in the bowl and beat on low speed until soft peaks form. Increase the speed to high until the cream reaches stiff peaks. Refrigerate until ready to use.

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